The way ByteDance does that could be to follow in the footsteps of Facebook. After establishing a major base through its core app in the early 2000s, the tech giant, now known as Meta, has expanded its ecosystem through the acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram, as well as becoming a single source of login for other services. It deals with all aspects of an online user’s life by itself. Ashley Dudarenok, a China marketing expert and founder of digital marketing firms Alarice and ChoZan said, “ByteDance’s overseas layout is not limited to the short video industry but includes a Upscale music and news platform number. “ByteDance has big ambitions for the overseas market, and its competition with Facebook is increasingly clear.”
Arnold Ma, CEO of Qumin, a digital marketing agency focused on China, said ByteDance has managed to develop this way in China to a certain extent. “Essentially, there is a fully integrated content journey for users, whether they just want to discover content or find information in an encyclopedic way,” he said. “They branched out a bit more to create a more segmented and diversified business model.”
“Being global has always been their ambition,” said Rui Ma, founder of Tech Buzz China, a community of investors and executives in the Chinese tech sector. “A lot of entrepreneurs in China [Zhang] Yiming’s generation made it their mission to build a global company. And globally, Chinese entrepreneurs typically mean more than 50% of their revenue comes from outside of China. Currently, ByteDance’s Chinese-language apps – key among them Douyin and Toutiao, a news aggregator – make up the majority of its revenue. But that could change as ByteDance tries to more clearly monetize TikTok’s billions of users by introducing e-commerce and increasing ad revenue from the app.
If you look closely, you can see the seeds of TikTok’s plan to build success outside of China and grow the broader business around ByteDance and its core product. Despite its appearance, it’s not really TikTok or Douyin, but the algorithmic engine that powers all of its apps. “Because of the nature of the company – that is, it is an AI company at its core – they can do a lot,” says Ouwehand.
When it first launched TikTok outside of China, ByteDance sought to try and build a base for the app in Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia, Japan, and Thailand. The company then moved to developing countries including India, where TikTok had more than 200 million monthly active users before being banned by the Indian government in June 2020 as part of a dispute. and Indonesia, where TikTok has 44 million users as of mid-2020, according to internal data. Brazil is also an important market for video-sharing apps, with some third party estimates making it TikTok’s second-largest global market. It’s no coincidence that the three test sites for Resso, ByteDance’s Spotify-like music streaming service launching in 2020, are Indonesia, India, and Brazil. Resso is available more than 40 million users divided between the three countries, and has a broader vision.
